Sunday 18 November 2012

MUSHclient GUI: 18-Nov-2012

It's been over two years since I released the last version of the God Wars II plugin.  I finally recovered the development version from my backups (from my old dead laptop) and extended it to properly use the big map.  As you can see from the following screenshot, there's now a small circular icon in the top left corner of the top map, and a downward pointing arrow in the top right corner:

(click image to enlarge)

If you click the circular icon, the big map opens, and you can actually use it to plot a course - clicking on the map sets your target destination to that position.  The small cross in thhe top right corner of the map closes it.  The big map also draws a line between your current position (the yellow circle) and your destination (the red circle), like so:

(click image to enlarge) 

For the time being, the big map is only available within the realm.  Thus if you enter another location, the circle icon will vanish:

(click image to enlarge)

The original maps were fine for my old laptop, but as you can see from the above screenshots there's very little space for the avatars underneath them - and it's even worse on my netbook.  So that's where the arrow icon (in the top right corner of the top map) comes in.  In full sized mode, the maps look like this:

(click image to enlarge)

But if you click the arrow, the maps shrink:

(click image to enlarge) 

Note that the arrow icon is now pointing upwards instead of downwards.

Friday 2 November 2012

GUI snippet version 8

Just a quick update, in case anyone is using version 7.  One of the variables wasn't initialised, resulting in some confusion during negotiation - this has now been fixed, and uploaded for version 8.  There are no other changes other than a couple of additions to the ROM installation instructions.

Wednesday 22 August 2012

GUI snippet version 7

It's been a while since the last version of the snippet, and I've since been working on other things.  But a few issues came up recently, so over the week I decided to create a new version with a few updates.  You can grab the latest version from here (or from MudBytes once they accept the latest submission).

• Tyche pointed out that the snippet didn't correctly respond to client-initiated negotiation.  This has now been corrected.

• A side-effect of the above change is that ECHO is now handled through the snippet.

• MSDP and ATCP could be used without negotiation.  Although this wouldn't really cause any problems, it was sloppy, and has now been fixed.

• I noticed most people didn't use the colours, instead preferring to use their existing Lopes-style implementations.  The snippet can now emulate that style of colour system, and includes an extended selection of default colours.

• MUSHclient wouldn't fully negotiate if it was set to autoconnect, and the same may be true of other clients.  The snippet will now attempt to renegotiate in such cases.

• Someone complained that "public domain" isn't always legally recognised, so I've clarified that the snippet can be used for any purpose without any conditions.

If you're updating from an older version of the snippet, please don't forget to make a backup of your MSSP and MSDP variables before copying the latest version, and update the appropriate literals for your mud name, MCCP, etc (in fact I'd recommend doing a diff just to make sure you don't miss anything).  You'll need to update to use the new ProtocolNoEcho() function (instructions are in the installation text files), but other than that you shouldn't need to make any additional changes to the rest of your mud.